Nurse Café
by TheDarkFlygon
Summary: [Coffeeshop/College pre-relationship HokuAn AU] Life could have honesty been simpler than that for Hokuto, a second-year Liteature major. There's, however, someone out there willing to just make it easier on him.
1. Don't Drink Coffee This Late, Sir

On second thought, his life may had been a mess, lately. For someone who liked organization, keeping a pace and thinking everything thoroughly to reach as much perfection as possible, he sure had allowed things to get messy without meaning to. To be fair to himself, problems had started piling up suddenly and at an incredible speed, to the point he didn't know in what order he should have attempted fixing them: should he prioritize taking care of his grandmother who broke her leg not too long ago, his studies increasing in volume or his club duties, even if his leader was getting on his nerves with his weird, nonsensical shenanigans?

At first, he tried managing everything at once, but after some weeks of pulling almost-all-nighters, he decided to seek alternatives. It didn't quite work out as planned, but at least, he had found a way to survive the storm for now: the local coffeeshop's espressos. For someone who used to be so on-the-nose with his health, that was a strange choice, sure, but being friends with people like Subaru Ahehoshi made one adaptable and needing to find solutions quickly, if just temporary.

Not that he didn't hate relying on coffee in the first place.

His new routine, solidified by a couple months spent tuning it to maximize time use and task efficiency (albeit it was still a bit stiff, like he had always been), consisted of doing the most he can, not fall onto his bed and immediately find sleep before getting woken up by his own anxiety, and continue on his day by getting a cup of coffee in the same café, each time, to the same cashier. It was always the same order in the same place at similar hours of the evening, which gave it a sense of comfort he wasn't against in times where he wasn't sure how he should have asked for help. All of what he was doing is stuff he was supposed to be doing by himself, after all: he shouldn't have needed someone else's help for that, didn't need to bring them through the mud with him (even if Isara had offered to help him, he had always declined: Isara may have very well been the only man he knew that had constantly been busier than him).

His grandma has told him before to lay it off, to let her do her thing and for him to focus on himself. While he intended on forcing himself not to barge into her life constantly, he quickly found himself doing it again even after her scolding: he just couldn't _not_ worry over it, he had to check if she was doing fine and if she was getting the hang of things. Ah, how thick-headed he's been!

(In a way, maybe he put himself in that mess to begin with. Should have applied his own advice and tasted his own medicine).

With a presentation dooming over his head for the next week and more drama club shenanigans, he had gotten backed in a corner: it was either researching for the entire night or risk getting an awful grade that'd sink his results to the bottom of the sea. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he had gone for the first option, albeit he was starting to think this may not have been the greatest idea he had ever had. (Actually, far from it). Still, that presentation wouldn't write itself on its own, so he went for it and spent a night or two working on that while occupying his daytime with taking care of his grandma (who's soon out of having her feet stuck in some cast, _thank God for that_) and club business and other college-related catastrophes strolling around in his life.

It was with a pounding headache and stumbling feet that he made it out of his flat and into the campus, heading straight for the café he always got his precious cup of coffee in (he was hesitating to put aspirin in the cup itself, but that sounded like a terrible idea, and he had left his aspirin tablets in his flat anyway), ignoring the gazes around him (it was easier to do when his sight is half-blurry to begin with). Once he was done with that necessary loss of time, he'd be able to come back to his actual work and that until he'd be finished with it. If he was productive enough, he should have been done with that presentation's slideshow by the time 5AM hits.

He entered the café, heard an unfamiliar bell ring immediately as he opened and closed the door, and went straight for the counter like a drunkard entering a tavern. He didn't care about it in the slighest: he pulls out his yens from his pocket, slams them on the counter and asks, in a groggy voice he doesn't like to hear to himself, "hello, I'd like an espresso, please", with the least charisma he could have mustered because he was that tired and he just wanted to be over with that _damn_ presentation already.

It was only when he rose his eyes to face the barista that he realized he had entered the wrong café, right as he faced a high school classmate, friend, and probably something else he couldn't quite put his finger on, whom had never worked at his usual café. He didn't say anything, but gulped and swallowed his pride back in, and payed for his espresso by pushing the coins anyway (Ahehoshi would have jumped on the counter to get them: they were undeniably shinier than they should have been).

"Good evening, sir, thank you for com…"

Silence.

"Hokuto, is that you?!"

That voice was no mistake: this was Anzu, from the Management course. This was going to be painful…

"Ah… Yeah…?" Oh God. What was he supposed to tell her? That he didn't even know where he was walking anymore? That this was all a giant misunderstanding on his part? "Yeah."

"I'm not used to seeing you around here? How are you?"

"…Fine." Something was missing. "I hope you're doing well too."

That wasn't really good dialogue. Not that Anzu picked up in it: she was probably too busy trying to do her job.

"Here you go, Hokuto…" She put his cup on the counter and picked his coins. "You're sure you should be drinking that at this time of the day? It's late and you'll have a hard time sleeping if you drink that now." Then she muttered to herself: "looks like you'd benefit from a good night's sleep too…"

"Thank you, have a goodnight."

He picked his cup and went to a table, legs feeling faint. There was nobody still around in the café: clearly, unlike his usual 24/7 place where there always was someone living in the night (the Sakuma brothers trying to avoid each other but finding themselves in the same place and Hajime taking part-time jobs were the firsts to come to his mind), this was a daytime place and he was all aone, stuck with his pounding headache and Anzu cleaning before closing. He had something like fifteen minutes to drink his fuming coffee and get out of there, but even his hands felt sluggish and unresponsive.

Maybe he really wanted to throw that presentation out of the window and just sleep for the next three days. He didn't even know what he was doing anymore anyway.

After a few moments, he watched with bleary eyes and eyelids closing on their own Anzu walked to him and sit on the opposite side of the table, staring at him with an expression he couldn't really read, before her hand arrived on his forehead. It was cold, unnaturally so, and he wondered if she didn't have blood circulation problems like he was worried he could have had before. Yet, despite his rising concerns, he still let himself lean into it, too tired to really pay attention to how he was behaving. That was bad, awful even. He needed to gulp his coffee, so he did, burnt his tongue and throat, and was about to pack it when he noticed she was still staring at him.

"I… I need to go, is there something wrong?" He asked, hoping this would be enough.

"You…"

Huh. Okay.

"I'm leaving now, I'll let you close the sh—"

Black dots appeared in his sight as soon as he got up and he felt his body plunge forward, hand slipping instead of grabbing at the table, vision blurring until all he could feel was hands wrapping themselves around him and faint, muffled sounds resonating in the distance.

It was all over, wasn't it? He couldn't move nor feel anymore, right? What a way to end his rush… What way to finish the evening that he was supposed to finish his presentation on… That was his way to go? Huh… Not like he could resist against his own body finally turning on him.

He had failed in a dramatic fashion, that was for sure.

And, to be honest, he kind of hated it.


	2. Fogged-Up Screens & Downgraded Sensors

Despite the lack of clear memories, he knew something was weird the moment it all felt fuzzy around him as soon as he woke up. It just wasn't something that happened to him often: usually, getting up in the morning was merely a task to accomplish, a minor thing he wouldn't have thought even once about and, clearly, wouldn't have had any difficulty handling said task.

It wasn't limited to just a weird case of short-term amnesia. As it stood, his entire surroundings were unfamiliar: through his slightly clogged nose, he could tell the sent around him was familiar, but not his flat's, not even his grandma's. His visuals were blurry and inexact, but he could still swear under the oath that it was unlike anything he had ever seen, let alone slept in. Where was he, exactly, and why?

Right as he thought about sitting up and sightseeing the room for himself to determine where he could possibly be, a pounding headache came back with all of his previously lost memories. Oh, right, he had gone out to get a coffee, got mistaken in his cafés, and Anzu had asked him if he was fine. After that, nothing: in the end, had he drunk his coffee? Presumably not, considering he was waking up and not working on this presentation he had sworn to finish tonight. Mission failed there. He'd have to retry next time, perhaps now, even if…

He had to admit defeat there. His entire body felt like lead. In fact, on second thought, he wasn't even sure if he could hold a pencil or even sit up. If a tight-knit schedule, a mile-long of obligations and excessive amounts of caffeine of a questionable quality had managed to keep him afloat for a short while, the inevitable happened: he was experiencing an exhaustion crash leaving him to be even less productive than a broken computer whose keyboard had been smashed into a wall, bearing an interface that had gotten corrupted during a forced shutdown.

He could continue on the metaphor for a while, considering he wasn't feeling able to even lift a finger, with his head as the only part he could tilt. It had felt like a shutdown because he had run out of battery, completely cessing to function until he could recover what he had lost in great quantities over an extended period of time. Not that anyone could have been able to do something against the issue that wouldn't have taken time: in these moments, he was finally understanding how much people were frustrated when their phone was discharged.

Time sure seemed like a nice thing to have and not just endlessly run out of, huh…

Voices in the distance. Echoing footsteps from far, far away, perhaps from a corridor nearby. Like everything else, they felt distorted and unfamiliar, until they weren't: once the distance had reduced between him and the rest of the world, he could distinguish Isara and Anzu's voices chatting about something, tone impossible to identify. He wasn't even sure if those actually were their voices or someone else's, albeit Anzu's voice had left an important-enough impact on his mind for him to be certain he wasn't getting mistaken there.

Trying to grasp onto the last of his memories and the few clear thoughts he could produce, Hokuto realized one thing: if he wasn't at his place, he had to go back there, no matter what crazy and improbable situation he had found himself in. Akehoshi and Yuuki had dragged him in enough weird affairs for him to know exactly what could happen: in a way, this is just yet another wacky situation his friends had gotten him in.

But, when he tried to get up and get moving, his body didn't bulge from a centimetre, his arms having failed him, his head having become too heavy for his neck to transport across the campus. Wherever he was, he was there for a while. Now if that wasn't just _amazing_.

"You're awake!" Anzu's voice had suddenly teleported right next to his ear, almost making him jump (or, at least, making him bob his head in surprise. It was weird to jump from getting scared when your body couldn't otherwise move).

She put a cold hand on his forehead, brushing loose strands of hair aside. It was one of the oddest feelings to get: when he'd have the occasion to touch her skin, for any reason, she'd have the warmer fingers of them both. He had always been told to have been born a cold-blooded person, quite literally so: was this what Anzu felt every time he worried about his blood circulation? It had no right to have felt this soothing.

"A… Anzu…?" His voice sounded groggy. Awful. Dry. The shadow of its own self, truly. He was almost ashamed to speak in such a fatigued, slowed-down tone. It sounded no better than absolute trash. "Where'm I…?" His words were slurring too, how delightful.

"At my place. I guess it must be confusing you to wake up in someone else's bed…" She shone him a timid smile, shoulders rising a little with a nervous twitch. "How are you feeling?"

"…t'rble…"

"I'd have guessed… You really have Mao and me a scare! He told me you should be all good in a few days, but as your friends, we can't help but worry, you know?"

"I… Isara was…?"

"Mao was passing by the café right after you passed out. He helped me get you to my place. He's just left though and gave me some advice, so you should be fine!"

To be fair, Anzu was the one he trusted the most after his grandmother about anything serious. Better be vulnerable in front of her than in front of anyone else. He guessed he should have felt lucky he hadn't stepped in his usual café, then, if it was to lose consciousness like that…

"Can you say "aaaah" for me for a bit, Hokuto? I promise it won't be for long."

Not like he had any other choice than do as she said, allowing her to put a thermometer under his tongue. Needless to say, it _still_ wasn't a pleasing feeling. Fortunately (or unfortunately, he'd decide about that when the fog in his brain would have finally let out) for him, the thing beeped quickly after she had first inserted it in. The face she made (from what he could see of it, at least) when reading the result wasn't exactly conveying him a great feeling about it all, putting her hand back onto his forehead as her eyes stared at the numbers.

"This fever's no joke, how were you even up running such a temperature?!" Oh God, she sounded angry and worried all the same.

Not that he had any explanation to give about it or justification as to how it had gotten this bad. He didn't know what number it was. He tried looking it up from the stick directly, but his eyes could only read something finishing in "9.7". That wasn't very useful to say the… Oh. _Oh_.

"I-I mean, you'll be fine if you just rest for a couple days! I didn't have fever reducers anymore, but Mao gave me some from his flat, so it should be just fine… Can you swallow anything? You need to down the pills with a glass of something, so I've brought you just that!"

Gathering all his forces, he pushed his upper half with feeble arms against the wall behind him, the back of his head hitting the hard material. That lethargy poisoning his entire body was no joke either. At least, he could now take the glass of water and pills Anzu was handing him. How was he supposed to resist against her bright smile and concern, huh? Not that reducing what had to be the prime source of his discomfort, especially now that the chills were knocking at the door, was bothering him in the slightest.

Downing the glass had been painful. It seemed like he hadn't just worked himself to complete exhaustion: in the process, his immune system had weakened considerably. This whole situation kept adding on points onto his internal list of why he should never try doing such a thing ever again.

As usual, Anzu had come all prepared to a fight, putting shortly thereafter a wet washcloth on his forehead and gently pushing him back into her own bed, hands on his shoulders and opposing no opposition whatsoever from his side of the equation.

"Wait, n'zu…" He managed to squeeze out of his pained airways. "Wher're you goin' t'sleep…?"

"I've got a futon prepared on the floor; I'll be fine. Just rest, okay? We'll see if you're good enough to go back to your flat tomorrow. You'll only get better if you sleep."

He merely nodded, sinking back into the covers. Their scent was nice, soothing even. It made the endeavour a bit more enjoyable, even if the word suddenly sounded too strong on his tongue.

"G'dnight then, I s'pose…"

Through his blurred vision turning to black, her smile shone again.

"Goodnight, Hokuto."


End file.
